ImmersaEngineering / Project engineering
Independent assurance before a gate is approved.
Whether a project is structured to succeed, and whether the economic case for it holds: the plan, the organisation, the resourcing, the capital and operating estimates, the return, and the risks that have not yet been written down. Delivered as an independent view for a sponsor, a board or an investment committee.
What is reviewed
Eighteen areas, from execution strategy to close-out.
Many of the decisions that fix a capital project’s cost and execution are taken before detailed design begins. A gate review is worth most when it happens early enough for the answer to change something.
Assurance and structure
The independent look, and the way the project is set up to deliver. Structure problems are cheap to fix at sanction and almost impossible to fix at construction.
- Independent gate reviews and project health checks
- Project planning and execution strategy
- Roadmaps, milestones and stage-gate definition
- Work breakdown structure and project organisation design
People and time
Whether the plan is resourced by people who exist, with the skills the scope actually needs, in the sequence the schedule assumes.
- Resource loading, skill-set mapping and capability gap analysis
- Schedule review — logic integrity, constraints and calendars, status quality, near-critical paths, resource feasibility, baseline and change control, and schedule risk
- Progress measurement and reporting frameworks
Cost, economics and risk
Whether the estimate is honest about what it excludes, whether the economic case survives its own sensitivities, and whether the register reflects the risks the team privately worries about.
- Capital cost (Capex) estimate review — classification framework, scope-definition maturity, basis, allowances and how contingency was derived
- Operating cost (Opex) build-up — utilities, consumables, labour, maintenance and overhead
- Levelised cost of production, and the throughput and availability assumptions it rests on
- Project economics — net present value, internal rate of return, payback and return on investment
- Sensitivity and scenario analysis, kept distinct from probabilistic risk analysis — varying one input at a time is not the same as jointly modelling correlated uncertainties
- Risk analysis, risk registers and mitigation strategies
Contract and interface
Who is responsible for what, where the scope splits, and what has to be ordered before anyone is ready to order it.
- Contracting and execution model selection — EPC, EPCM or owner-managed
- Interface management and scope-split definition
- Procurement strategy and long-lead item identification
- Stakeholder identification, mapping and engagement planning
- Close-out, lessons learned and as-built handover review
How it is delivered
An independent view a sponsor can act on.
A gate review produces a written position, not a workshop summary. It states what is ready, what is not, and what would have to be true for the gate to pass.
Gate review
An independent assessment of a plan, estimate, schedule or stage gate ahead of approval, together with the risks not yet recorded on the register.
Typically one to two weeks, timed to land before the decision.
Project health check
For a project already underway where something feels wrong but nobody can name it. Structure, resourcing, interfaces and reporting are examined against what the schedule assumes.
Scoped to the concern rather than to a template.
Typical findings
What a review of this kind turns up.
Illustrative and non-attributable. Each is invented; no engagement lies behind any of them.
- A Class 4 estimate presented to a board as a sanction number.The accuracy range was in the appendix. The contingency carried was not derived from quantified uncertainty or from the risk register at all, and the gap between it and the estimate’s own stated range exceeded the project’s margin.
- A critical path that ran through a vendor with no purchase order.The long-lead item had a 40-week quoted lead time and 12 weeks of float in the schedule, on the assumption that the order was already placed.
- A resource plan that assumed one engineer on three concurrent workfronts.The loading was sound at the discipline level and impossible at the individual level, which is where the schedule actually gets consumed.
- A risk register with no entry for the item everyone raised informally.The single most-cited concern in the interviews did not appear in the register, because no one owned it.
- A levelised cost built on nameplate output from year one.Ramp-up was in the schedule and absent from the economic model. Two years of reduced output moved the return below the sponsor's own hurdle rate.
- An operating cost carried as a percentage of capital cost.The equipment selected required a specialist annual service the percentage did not cover. The return on investment was nonetheless quoted to two decimal places.
Invented for illustration. Nothing arising from a real engagement is reused, retold or cited as a credential.
See the deliverable
Read one before you commission one.
The specimen is a process design review rather than a gate assessment, so the subject differs from the work on this page. The structure does not: ranked findings, stated assumptions, residual risk, and a revision record that closes each finding against a named response.
It carries the assumptions relied on, a sensitivity table, the items examined and found sound alongside those that were not, the residual risk that remains after the recommended actions, and a passage setting out where the conclusion could be wrong. Every page is marked SPECIMEN; the facility, the client and the findings are invented.
Have a gate, an estimate or an economic case reviewed.
A short description of the problem, the document set or the decision is enough to confirm suitability, propose a structure and give an indicative cost. A mutual non-disclosure agreement is executed before technical detail is exchanged.
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